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Each and every week the review team at 148Apps sorts through the latest releases, finding the best of the best for you. Take a look at what we've reviewed this week, and find even more in our Reviews Archive.

The trial platformer, akin to Super Meat Boy on PC or League of Evil on mobile, is a genre that often requires patience and precision. Thanks in large part to its touchscreen-friendly controls, Shadow Blade rocks the house. Players control a ninja who must get past enemies and traps; pulling off acrobatic jumps and deadly attacks to fell those who would dare stop this shadowy warrior. The ninja can double-jump, dash in the air, execute stealth kills from behind enemies or in the air, and just slice the opposition until they’re no longer a threat. --Carter Dotson

Regardless of whether it’s actually any good, the mobile release of Farm Heroes Saga was always going to be a big deal. Made by King, the makers of Candy Crush Saga and numerous other Saga games, it doesn’t really have to do a lot to be immediately very popular. Fortunately, King doesn’t appear to have rested on its laurels, with Farm Heroes Saga proving one of the better Match-3 games out there. It’s a very familiar format so those who weren’t keen on Candy Crush Saga aren’t going to be swayed here. It’s a format that works though, and works well. Akin to Zookeeper, players work their way through each level by matching together relevant quotas of crops. Early stages might simply involve matching 5 green smiling crops and 10 strawberries, but this is just the game easing one in gently. Soon enough, things turn much more challenging and also much more satisfying. --Jennifer Allen

Slot car racing is a pastime that many of us will have enjoyed as children. Offering a more tactile experience than any game could have provided, fond memories are easy to come by when it comes to creating one’s own race track before trying to negotiate it safely and successfully. Rail Racing can’t quite capture that magical spirit, lacking the tactile edge, but it’s still a great form of racing game with a twist. Players must outrace the competition across 50 imaginatively themed stages, gaining up to three stars to gauge success. It’s a simple concept but one that’s fun and easy to lose time to. Each race only takes a couple of minutes to complete, making it ideal for a mobile format. Stages are designed according to various locations that such races would take place; such as a child’s bedroom, the backyard, and even a dusty attic. It’s a neat touch, although ultimately many of the tracks are a little samey. --Jennifer Allen

Eternity Warriors 3 is an easy to like game. It’s pretty shallow, offering a Diablo-style experience with a wafer-thin storyline, but much like the allure of MMOs it’s oddly easy to lose time to this action RPG. The game mostly consists of going from A to B, completing simple quests, collecting experience, and returning to the central hub of the game to upgrade equipment and buy new skills. It’s a concept that’s been done many times before, but that’s because it’s an often beguiling mix. Players start out with the choice of taking control of a warrior or monk, with a mage unlocked much later on in the game. Each class offers different advantages and disadvantages, and it shows – providing a slightly different experience each time. --Jennifer Allen

Finally, iOS users are able to scratch that itch to get their hands dirty and serve up a smile in strategy restaurant sim Cook, Serve, Delicious. Right off the bat it’s easy to see that this is an outstanding port of a game originally released on PC – a game that has been creating some buzz for some time. Heating up the restaurant simulation genre to a sizzling degree, Cook, Serve, Delicious is one wonderfully addictive game that had me hooked the second I picked it up. For first-timers here, there’s a lot to learn, but it didn’t take long before I was juggling orders and taking out trash, trying to appease the masses of customers who expect the crème de la crème. --Lucy Ingram

Unique, challenging, haunting. I’m not sure how else to describe Lost Toys. This 3D puzzler opens new doors in the app world. Its breathtakingly simple, yet elegant graphics, accompanied by the hauntingly beautiful piano score, immediately seduce your senses. This game is all about being lost – lost in solitude, lost in concentration, lost in a world of restoring beauty and color to the darkness. The gray, blurry background only intensifies the experience of bringing the toys back to life. This “gothic masterpiece” is not just a game; it’s an emotional journey. The creators want each person to follow their own path to unearthing the mysteries of this puzzled world. --Stacy Barnes

Three Little Pigs. The Story is a very nice re-telling of the classic story of the same name, illustrated with marvelous and witty stop-motion claymation that I greatly enjoy. I am very fond of this re-telling – a very nice adaptation of the original Joseph Jacobs version of this tale, involving the clever way the third little pig seeks revenge from the wolf for the loss of his two other siblings who lost both house and life to this creature. The deaths of these pigs are off-screen of course, mentioned but not dwelled on – a nice take on this classic story as I have seen many versions of this tale ranging from the sanitized choice of having the brother pigs run for protection to the brick house to a more threatening pig experience that may not be best for the youngest users. This app does however include the extended version of this traditional tale bringing the pig and wolf to the fair and beyond, moments often left out of many versions of this story. --Amy Solomon

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If you are looking for the best reviews of Android apps, just head right over to AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews served up this week:

AndroidRundown

Overlive casts the player as one of the few survivors of an almost total zombie apocalypse. Hiding out in a ruined apartment Overlive is all about striking out randomly, finding better weapons and supplies and ultimately finding a way out of the ruined city, while maybe discovering what’s really happening on the way. The star of Overlive is its story, the game is text based and there are loads of great moments and surprises, such as the extremely graphic ways violence is described and the depictions of the sheer desolation of a zombie apocalypse. Whenever it’s eating icecream while a dead family is in the next room, to holding a sobbing woman as she slowly bleeds to death, the game is riddled with passages that won’t be forgotten for a long time. Overlive’s sense of humour and self-awareness makes it very fun to read. Indeed it is as much like gamebook as a true RPG. --Allan Curtis

Amoebattle is, perhaps, the first original mobile real-time strategy that can be called that without any stretch. Most of the real-time strategies are either too simple or too flawed, and the ones that are working, are mirror copies of older titles. Amoebattle manages to be neither. And it manages to do so without ridiculous production values. --Tony Kuzmin

And finally, this week the guys at Pocket Gamer picked out the best detective games and the best games without IAPs, reviewed new apps likes Shadow Blade, Baldur's Gate II, and Lost Yeti, and turned an Android device into a portable Dreamcast. See it all right here.

Sega has just released another classic game from the Dreamcast days - Jet Set Radio. Tag and grind your way to the beat of this super retro, much-beloved arcade rhythm game, now with new swipe-based controls, retina display, 29 of the 30 original tunes, and Gamecenter support.

It’s a funny coincidence that just the other day we were talking about 3D games from the late 90’s and early 2000’s making their revival on iOS, because Crazy Taxi just got released for iOS. Controlling a taxi driver in one of two cities inspired by San Francisco, it’s all about picking up fares and taking them to their destination as quickly as possible, ignoring traffic laws because those are stupid. There’s different types of fares to pick up, with the color above their head representing how far it will take to get to the destination, but also how much money can be earned. There’s an overall timer and a timer for each fare, and if the fare timer runs out, then no money is earned, and if the overall timer runs out, it’s game over.

Crazy Taxi is a perfect fit for mobile: the game sessions only last a few minutes, so they’re great for pick-up-and-play sessions, and the amped-up pace keeps things interesting. The gas/brake and forward/reverse gear controls have been combined, which makes it easier to pull off a lot of the more advanced maneuvers, which is almost a good thing. The touch controls actually work really well, they feel like using the d-pad on the Dreamcast version, and the tilt controls work for those who actually like to drive their cars by "steering" them. I feel like I did as well as I did in the original game, and that’s all I really want from a port like this.

Thankfully, the soundtrack is even the same as it was before, consisting of 3 songs each by The Offspring and Bad Religion. It would have been easy for Sega to cheap out and leave the drum riff from “Change The World” that’s used as the main menu music out, but they kept it in. Is it all a bit repetitive? Sure, but they form such an integral part of the game’s character that to not have them would just make the game feel like it has something truly missing. In fact, the only thing missing is the licensed drop-off points, so instead of taking customers to KFC, they’re going to Fried Chicken Shack. That’s literally it: everything else from the Dreamcast version is faithfully represented, including the Crazy Box challenges.

I’m absolutely in love with Crazy Taxi on iOS: it’s a fantastic port of a bona fide classic. Maybe I’m being clouded by nostalgia, and forgiving the little things that annoy me nowadays, like the wonky-at-times physics and driving, but I don’t care. It’s Crazy Taxi wherever I want to go, and faithfully represented. The game is still quite original, and worth checking out for anyone who loves this title or missed it on the first go-around.